High Noon

Coffee, she thought again, and maybe a quick carton of the low-fat yogurt she constantly tried to convince herself she actually liked. Leave a note on the fridge, check with the cop on duty, and she’d be gone.
    As she stepped into the kitchen, Essie turned from the stove. Both women gasped and stumbled back.
    “I thought you were upstairs asleep,” Phoebe said.
    “I thought you were.” Essie gave her heart two quick pats. “Though you might as well shoot me as scare me to death, I’d as soon you didn’t. Shoot me,” she said with a nod toward the hand Phoebe had on the butt of her weapon.
    “Sorry.” Phoebe let her hand slide away. “It’s barely six in the morning, Mama. Why aren’t you upstairs sleeping?” And at her mother’s quiet stare, Phoebe shook her head, then moved over. “Mama.” With her arms around Essie, she rocked. “What a goddamn mess.”
    “You’re dressed for work.”
    Phoebe kept holding, kept rocking, but the eyes she’d closed opened again. “I need to go in.”
    “I wish you didn’t. I wish you wouldn’t. I wish…No, don’t pull back to pat and placate me.” Essie’s voice sharpened as she tightened her hold on Phoebe. “You’re still my little girl, and I wish I could keep you safe in this house. My whole family’s under this roof now, and I wish—I know it’s sick and it’s selfish but, my God, I wish I could keep all of you here.”
    It was Essie who stepped back. “And I know I can’t. I’ll get your coffee.”
    Phoebe started to say she’d get it herself, then stopped. Busy hands, she knew, helped her mother’s worried mind. “I know you’re scared, Mama.”
    “’Course I’m scared. I’d be stupid not to be. Roy’s worthless ass is blown to hell.” She glanced back as she got out a mug. “I keep thinking I should feel bad saying that kind of thing, but I don’t. You never blamed him nearly enough, to my way of thinking. Didn’t matter, because I blamed him plenty for both of us. But I’m scared for you, baby. For all of us.”
    She poured coffee, added the cream and sugar exactly as Phoebe preferred. “I know you’re worried I’ve gotten worse.”
    “I worry,” Phoebe agreed. “I’m still your little girl, right? Well, you’ll always be my mama.”
    “Sit down, baby. I’m going to fix you some breakfast.”
    “I don’t have time. I’m just going to grab a carton of yogurt.”
    “You hate that stuff.”
    “I know. But I’m trying to acquire a taste.” Determined, Phoebe opened the fridge, grabbed a carton at random. Once she’d opened it, gotten a spoon, she leaned back against the counter. “I know that with what happened, with being smart enough to be scared, you’d be cautious about going out in the courtyard, or onto the front veranda, but—”
    “I’ve been having trouble with that for a while now.” Idly, Essie picked up a dishcloth to wipe the already spotless counter. “The veranda, the bedroom terrace especially. Palpitations,” she said. “Knowing it’s in my head doesn’t make my heart beat any easier. But what you’ve never really understood is, I’m content inside this house. I don’t need what’s out there.”
    Phoebe ate some yogurt. It tasted sour, just like her thoughts. “The world?”
    “I’ve got a nice world inside this house most days, and if I need to know anything more about the outside one, I’ve got my computer. Honey, let me fix you some eggs.”
    “This is fine.” She picked up her coffee to wash the taste away. “Have you been having panic attacks when I’m not here?”
    “Not full-blown ones. Tickles now and then. Phoebe, there’s only one reason I wish I could walk out that door. That’s so you could, if that’s what you wanted. So you could walk away from this house. If I could, is that what you’d do?”
    “Mama, I don’t have time to talk about this now.”
    “It’s not yet six-thirty in the morning, and if you’re in a hurry, then you can answer quick and be done with it.”
    Phoebe opened a cabinet, tossed the half-eaten yogurt in the trash. “I don’t know. Some days, I’d say yes. I’d walk away from this house just to spite Cousin Bess. She had no right, no right to work you like a dog and give you nothing.”
    “She gave me a place to take my children when I was desperate.”
    “And made you pay and pay and pay, every single day.”
    “Do you think that mattered?” The little white scar stood out sharply when Essie’s cheeks flushed with